I was talking to a friend hte other dya about getting myself an HDTV, and he was saying that I would need to get a HD decoder also If I wanted to watch anything at higher than 480i. I told him that I only needed to get a special decoder box or whatever if I got HD cable or satelite service, but my DVD player with the component outputs and any game consoles with component outputs could just plug right in and display whatever signal I choose as the output from the system as long as the TV can support it.

who is right?

 

A regular DVD player set to progressive scan will be set at 480p. Non progressive scan would be 480i. The tv you buy will be hd ready, and possibly have an hd tuner built in. If it has a built in tuner, then you may be able to just plug in a cable wire directly to the tv and get some hd signal, this depends on your cable provider, and it offers less channels in hd then if you were to get a HD cable box. The HD cable box will output at 720p or 1080i, both of which are comparable. If you were to get an HD DVD or Blue Ray, then you could get an outstanding image from dvd. You will not get higher then a 480p on a regular dvd player. Some game systems can though.

 

i saw at BB, they have this denon player that says it has selectable scaling to 1080p??
what the hell does that mean? is it just the same as any other player that is HD Upconverting?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1151658134954

 

We have an up converting DVD player. I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, when it broke we just hooked up an older 5 disk P-scan we had. We have since got it back, but not bothered reconnecting it. It Toshiba, and its crap, expensive crap. Just go with blue-ray if you want an HD player, and don't support HD-DVD until they come out with a combined system.

Mike

 

You are correct for the most part. Your DVD player will work fine with component cables, however, the DVD player will only output 480p, then your TV will upconvert the signal to whatever the TV's native resolution is (either 720p, 1080i, or 1080p). You won't be looking at an HD signal, but it will look good b/c the TV will clean the picture up a bit, but in reality it is only a cleaned up 480p picture and nothing more.

If you get a BluRay or HD-DVD player then you will be watching true HD on those movies (720p, 1080i, 1080p).

If you get an HD Cable box or HD Satellite receiver they will support true HD on selected channels which broadcast in HD (720p, 1080i).

The Xbox 360 can output at 720p or 1080i, so that would be HD also.

A PS3 can output at 720p, 1080i, or 1080p via HDMI, so that would be HD as well.

That should be everything

.

 

Yup, just upconverting. It's just a DVD player, so native is 480p/480i.

If it were a BluRay or HD-DVD player, then it would support up to 1080p.